Recent or current COVID-19 patients face a significantly higher risk of venous thromboembolism after surgery compared to those without a recent infection, findings published Aug. 24 in Anaesthesia suggest.
The study was led by researchers in the U.K. and included more than 128,000 surgical patients from hospitals spanning 115 countries. Of those, 3.5 percent had a COVID-19 diagnosis.
Overall, the rates of postoperative VTE were: 0.5 percent of of patients without COVID-19; 2.2 percent of those with perioperative COVID-19, or those diagnosed seven days before to 30 days after surgery; 1.6 percent of patients with recent COVID-19, or those diagnosed between one and six weeks before surgery; and 1 percent of patients with previous COVID-19, or those diagnosed seven or more weeks before surgery.
After adjustment for confounding factors, patients with a current infection had a 50 percent higher risk of developing the serious blood clot, while those with a recent infection had a 90 percent increased risk, findings showed.
VTE was also independently associated with a higher death risk within 30 days after surgery: COVID-19 patients without the blood clot had a 7.4 percent risk of death, rising to 40.8 percent when VTE was involved — a more than fivefold jump.
"People undergoing surgery are already at higher risk of VTE than the general public, but we discovered that a current or recent SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with a greater risk of postoperative VTE," said Dr. Elizabeth Li, study co-author and general surgery registrar at University Hospital Birmingham in England. "Surgical patients have risk factors for VTE, including immobility, surgical wounds, and systemic inflammation — and the addition of SARS-CoV-2 infection may further increase the risk."